Taking a drive through the city of Montreal, you can see how run down it all looks - from the roads to the freeway flyovers, to the rusting silos on the docks at the Port of Montreal - the world's largest inland port.

However, Canada is now investing big in infrastructure, committing $70 billion over the next 10 years.

And that is not the only difference with Australia. In Canada, more than half of all infrastructure projects are done not by the federal or provincial governments, but by local councils.

The councils build roads, bridges, and public transport networks. They also look after electricity, water, and even airports.

Not that they wanted it that way.

"Well, it's happened over the years and it hasn't always been a good reason. It's basically been downloaded from senior levels of government," said Jim Watson, the mayor of Canada's capital city, Ottawa.

"We have a highway in the east end of our city called Highway 174, which was a provincial responsibility but about a decade ago [and] was downloaded to a local principality.

"And that's a huge cost. It's not just the cost of keeping it up, it's also the operating cost of snow ploughing, of repaving, of maintaining and so on and that becomes very expensive.

You hand us this highway, it's not in great shape, and then we are burdened with the cost of using property tax dollars to repair it and keep it in safe working order.

Ottawa mayor Jim Watson

"Especially because when the bigger governments handed over the projects without giving the councils the money to maintain them.

"We had a situation last year where there was a major sinkhole on that highway that swallowed a car. Thank goodness no-one was killed.

"But it was an example of, you know what - you hand us this highway, it's not in great shape, and then we are burdened with the cost of using property tax dollars to repair it and keep it in safe working order."

Mr Watson said no-one knew where the next tranche of money was coming from.

"The federal government would bring in a five-year plan, a six-year plan, a three-year plan and you did not really know from one government's term to the next whether you could count on those dollars," he said.

Leaving big projects to local councils is a far-from-perfect system, not just because it is harder for them to do things like raise private capital.